The invention relates to a clip and to a method of positioning, on a printed circuit for example, a connector, fitted with right-angled contacts for example, of the DIN type, of the D type, of the Sub-D type, of the power plug type, etc.
The invention relates more particularly to a harpoon-type clip having two parallel resilient arms provided at their respective ends with a protuberance which is intended to ensure that the connector is retained on the printed circuit.
These metal clips are known and allow the connector to be positioned, by pressing it down, once inserted into the printed circuit, being retained by means of the resilient arms of the harpoon. Having thus prepositioned the connector on the printed circuit, the right-angled contacts of the connector are then soldered, generally by wave soldering.
With this type of connector, thus soldered and held in place on the printed circuit practically only by means of the contacts, it has been found that there is often a problem when transporting or using the latter. This is because a side impact may lift it, twisting the right-angled contacts, and thus moving it away from its nominal use position.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,468,154 describes a connector fitted with right-angled contacts using such metal retention clips intended for holding it in place and for positioning it on a printed-circuit board in order to be welded thereto. FIG. 1 shows diagrammatically a clip 1 of the prior art, having two arms 4 and 6. Because the arms 4 and 6 are too far apart, the probability of the process of soldering them being correctly carried out, or simply of being possible, is very low. Consequently, only the contacts are therefore soldered and allow the connector to be held in place on the printed circuit.
A known solution for solving this problem consists in soldering the harpoon(s) to the printed circuit.
This solution involves metallizing the printed circuit at the location of the harpoons, which means that the printed-circuit boards then have to be modified and hence they will be more costly.